Archives for the month of: March, 2019
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Why Did Trump Hide His Academic Records if He Did as Well As He Claimed?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
59

Why is this “stable genius” hiding his academic records? This story appeared in the Washington Post:

 

‘Grab that record’: How Trump’s high school transcript was hidden


A portrait of Donald Trump hangs on the wall at the New York Military Academy, in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. (Mike Groll/AP)
By Marc Fisher

March 5 at 4:27 PM

In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged President Barack Obama to “show his records” to prove that he hadn’t been a “terrible student,” the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: Find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.

The superintendent of the private school “came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends” and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time. “He said, ‘You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.’ ”

The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale, confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially wanted him to hand over Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said he refused.

“I was given directives, part of which I could follow but part of which I could not, and that was handing them over to the trustees,” he said. “I moved them elsewhere on campus where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.”

The former NYMA officials’ recollections add new details to one of the allegations that Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, made before Congress last week. Cohen, who told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that part of his job was to attack Trump’s critics and defend his reputation, said that Trump ordered him “to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

Trump has frequently boasted that he was a stellar student, but he declined throughout the 2016 campaign to release any of his academic records, telling The Washington Post then, “I’m not letting you look at anything.”

Michael Cohen said in his Feb. 27 testimony that President Trump directed him “to threaten” academic institutions regarding the release of his SAT scores. (Reuters)

Last year, he said he “heard I was first in my class” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business program, where he finished his undergraduate degree, but Trump’s name does not appear on the school’s dean’s list or on the list of students who received academic honors in his class of 1968.

Trump spent five years at the military academy, starting in the fall of 1959, after his father — having concluded that his son, then in the seventh grade, needed a more discipline-focused setting — removed him from his Queens private school and sent him Upstate to NYMA.

At the academy, which modeled its strict code of conduct after the nearby U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump loved competing to win contests for cleanest room or best-made bed. Although not known as an academic standout, he was a prominent baseball player and was well known on campus for bringing women there and showing them around. Despite getting a series of Vietnam War medical deferments for bone spurs in his feet, Trump has said that his military academy background provided “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

Trump told The Post during the 2016 campaign that he “did very well under the military system. I became one of the top guys at the whole school.”

He said his parents originally sent him there because “I was a wise guy, and they wanted to get me in line.”

Jones and Coverdale declined to disclose the contents of his transcript.

Those who were aware of the 2011 effort to conceal Trump’s records said the request set off a frenzy at the military academy.

“I know for a fact that in 2011, the decision was made by the superintendent to remove those records and secure them so no one on the staff could get to them,” said Richard Pezzullo, a graduate who worked closely with school officials in a drive to save the school, which was then in financial distress. “People had been making inquiries, and there was a paramount interest in securing those records.”

The boarding school had no formal archive at the time. Jones said he combed through the basement of Scarborough Hall on the academy’s sprawling campus, 60 miles north of New York City, and found the real estate mogul’s transcript in file cabinets containing student records.

Categories Education Reform

Atlanta: A Public Protest Against the “Portfolio Model”

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
17

The Atlanta School Board is controlled by a slate of former Teach for America teachers. They are devoted to privately managed charter schools. They don’t seem to have any ideas about how to improve public schools other than to outsource them. They are determined to impose a portfolio district model that welcomes more charter operators staffed by temps like they once were.

A group of Atlanta citizens, led by Edward Johnson, perennial fighter for incremental improvement, not disruption, has presented a petition to the School Board:

 

An Open Letter to Atlanta Board of Education:
Why the Portfolio Privatization Plan for Atlanta is a Bad Idea

 

We, the undersigned, request that members of the Atlanta Board of Education vote against any resolution or resolutions brought before the Board on March 4, 2019, or at any other time, that would establish any aspects of the would-be Excellent Schools Framework in the Atlanta Public Schools district.
 
The Excellent Schools Framework, which is based on the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan, is another corporate privatization effort intended to, in effect, turn over our public schools to private companies and establish charter schools that use public money for what are essentially private schools.  Our public schools are not stocks and bonds in an investment portfolio to be bought, sold, and speculated. Our public schools are where children ought to be nurtured, protected, and educated.
 
We know that, in addition to privatization, school closures and attacks on teachers will accompany any implementation of the Portfolio of Schools plan, which the Atlanta Board of Education’s would-be Excellent Schools Framework is based on.  No research exists that indicates the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan actually leads to improving learning for students and teaching for teachers.
 
We also know The City Fund is promoting the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan, with $200 million raised to use to influence targeted urban public school districts to adopt, adapt, and implement the plan.  The City Fund’s local designated entity, RedefinED, has used its money to organize astroturf support for this plan.
 
This proposal is especially disturbing, coming at the time when the Board and Superintendent have already set hundreds of billions of dollars to go to billionaire social impact investors and real estate developers in “The Gulch” deal, downtown.
 
We urge you, the Atlanta Board of Education, to forgo your Excellent Schools Framework and, instead, adopt evidence-based models, such as the Community Schools model, that actually work for children.
 
Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Portfolio District, Privatization

Remember the Congressman That AOC Beat?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
36

 

There was much gnashing of teeth in establishment Democratic circles when 29-year-Old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes beat high-ranking Congressman Joe Crowley. Upstart! How dare she?

But don’t cry for Joe Crowley. He has landed a job at one of DC’s top lobbying firms, which represents fossil fuels, private prisons, and other distinctly non-liberal corporations. 

Since I’m meeting AOC in a week to talk about education, I started reading about her. Clearly Republicans are obsessed with her to the point of madness. I worry about her safety.

I liked this article in Vox.

This satirical piece by the wonderful Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post made me laugh out loud. 

It starts:

“Enough is enough! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs to stop inserting herself into our every waking moment!

“I am sick of hearing about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from my voice talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I would like to spend just one day without seeking out, looking at and commenting on pictures of her everywhere she goes. It would be nice, just once, not to have to be enraged by clicking on an article that mentions her name, and then another, and then another. Just once I want to spend a day without bringing her up, unprovoked, in the middle of a discussion of an unrelated subject.

I just don’t know why people are so obsessed with her, specifically, myself. Why has she compelled me to type her name so many times that when I type the letter “A,” my phone supplies “OC”? It is a conspiracy, I think.

“Just yesterday, I had to listen to an exhausting, 10-minute lecture from some idiot who would not shut up about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, only to discover that it was myself, talking to myself. This happens every day.

“Why is it that when I look into fire, her face emerges and when I gaze at the spots on a cow (She hates the cows! She wants to destroy them!), I see what appears to be her profile? How can it be that this week alone I have read 18 articles about her, two of which I did not write?” And more in that vein.

I think I have figured out why so many of those curmudgeons not only don’t like her, they hate her. She is not only young and joyful but she has the ideals they long ago lost. They are jealous. They are not young. They are not joyful. And they have no ideals, just deals.

 

Categories Education Reform, Humor, Joy

D.C.: Teachers Unfairly Terminated by Michelle Rhee Win $5 Million Settlement: VICTORY!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
62

The Washington Teachers Union won a long-standing battle with the D.C. public schools caused by the unfair implementation of Michelle Rhee’s teacher evaluation program called IMPACT.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080406934_pf.htmlhttps://www.dclabor.org/home/wtu-settles-excessed-teachers-case

https://www.dclabor.org/home/wtu-settles-excessed-teachers-case

 

 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, hailed the settlement:

 

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Washington Teachers’ Union reached a landmark settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over teachers terminated by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee:

“This settlement doesn’t take away the hurt and shame Michelle Rhee inflicted on so many great D.C. teachers—but after a long fight, it is a small step toward vindication for those who suffered from her top-down, test-and-punish policies that have failed both the arbitrator’s test and the test of time.

“Instead of helping teachers get what students need, Rhee embarked on a blame-and-shame campaign that was as ineffective as it was indefensible. There is a straight line between the Rhee agenda—which tried to strip educators of any voice and dignity and reduced students to test scores and teachers to algorithms—to the current walkouts in which educators are fighting for an appropriate investment in public schools. Teachers fight for what students need. That is as true now as it was when Michelle Rhee denigrated their voice.

“What happened a decade ago still stings, but the teachers in Washington, D.C., who were wrongly fired will take some measure of comfort from this settlement; and their unions will continue to fight to make sure the wrong-headed mentality that pitted students against their teachers never arises again.”

Background

The Washington Teachers’ Union, an AFT affiliate, has reached a settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over the union’s grievance involving teachers “excessed” in 2010. The overall value of the settlement agreement is more than $5 million.

Under the settlement agreement, each teacher who was terminated by DCPS as a result of this “excessing” will be entitled to monetary compensation.
Categories District of Columbia, Justice, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

Los Angeles: More About the Billionaire Boys Club, Who Are Adrift and Forlorn

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
11

I have been posting a lot about the race for the empty seat on the LAUSD school board because it is the second largest district in the nation, the largest with an elected board, and the Billionaire Boys Club has been trying to buy control of it. Eli Broad wants half the students in LAUSD in charter schools, and “only” 20%  are now in charters. The BBC thought they won control when they put Ref Rodriguez, a charter operator, on the board, and he was elected president of the board. But then he was convicted of money laundering and had to resign (but not until he voted to select financier Austin Beutner as superintendent).

Now, all their plans are in disarray because progressive firebrand Jackie Goldberg is on the cusp of winning Ref’s old seat, which she held many years ago. She is smart, tough, knowledgeable, experienced. She was a teacher, a member of the City Council, and a member of the State Assembly (and chair of the Education Committee). In the special election of March 5, she won 48% of the vote, and the next runners up got 13%  each. The LA Times declined to endorse Jackie, saying she was too “ideological,” and instead endorsed a candidate who received 9% of the vote.

Poor billionaires! All that money spent and so little to show for it!

Here is the latest report on campaign funding from Howard Blume of the LA Times.

 

Philanthropist Eli Broad inserted himself into a pivotal Los Angeles school board race at the last second this week, making the largest individual donation to any candidate.

Broad’s $100,000 didn’t go directly to a candidate for the open District 5 seat, but to a union running its own campaign on behalf of Heather Repenning. Such independent campaigns have no donation limits.

The election day contribution went to a political action committee run by Local 99 of Service Employees International, which represents school district employees. Broad has frequently opposed unions politically.

Local 99’s ideological alliances have sometimes shifted. It has typically supported board members running for reelection regardless of who else supports them.

Repenning’s campaign is currently on hold as more than 4,700 ballots still are being counted. She is just behind Graciela Ortiz, in a virtual tie, for the second spot in a May 14 runoff for the office; after the initial vote count on Tuesday, only 53 votes separated them. Only one of them will make it to the ballot to face Jackie Goldberg, who far outpaced all other candidates.

In Tuesday’s vote, Repenning and Ortiz finished about 35 percentage points behind Goldberg, who nearly won a majority of votes, which would have eliminated the need for a runoff.

Repenning was the best-funded candidate because of Local 99, which represents cafeteria workers, bus drivers, building and grounds workers, teaching assistants and unarmed campus security aides.

The former public works commissioner is a highly qualified candidate that the union, Broad and others can agree on, said Max Arias, the union’s executive director.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti also endorsed Repenning.

In all, Local 99 spent about $1 million on behalf of Repenning, the largest amount for any candidate. United Teachers Los Angeles was the next largest contributor, spending more than $660,000 on behalf of Goldberg.

Repenning has tried to position herself as a centrist, close neither to charter backers nor union interests.

Charter schools are privately operated and compete with district-run schools for students. Most are nonunion. Local 99 represents workers at only two of the more than 200 charters in the district, according to the union. But children of union members attend both charter and traditional schools.

In past elections, Broad has been a major donor to candidates endorsed by charter school advocates — who typically are opposed by candidates backed by the teachers union. Charter supporters did not coalesce around a single candidate in this election cycle.

Another major pro-charter donor, Manhattan Beach businessman Bill Bloomfield, gave $5,000 to a Local 99 PAC. He also gave $1,200 directly to the campaign of Allison Bajracharya, a charter school executive also on the ballot. Bajracharya, who finished fifth, attracted direct donations from many charter supporters. A group associated with charter backers, Students for Education Reform Action Network, spent nearly $139,000 on her behalf.

Because Broad is a high-profile figure and a major donor, his contributions tend to get noticed. And it’s not the first time that his donation has arrived too late to be part of the news cycle before voting takes place.

Both Broad and Bloomfield have made much larger donations in the past. In the final stretch of the 2017 L.A. Board of Education campaigns, Broad gave nearly $1.9 million to California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, a political action committee that was spending heavily in the race. Bloomfield contributed $2.275 million, the vast majority of it late in that campaign.

Categories Billionaires

On Paul Manafort’s Sentence of 47 Months

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
49

 

From this morning’s Washington Post:

 

— A string of defense attorneys, especially public defenders, pointed to much harsher sentences doled out to people for non-white-collar crimes than what Manafort got from Ellis. Mueller’s team laid out evidence during the Virginia trial that Manafort, by concealing $16 million in income, didn’t pay $6 million he would have owed in federal taxes, among other crimes.

“Scott Hechinger, a senior staff attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, an organization that provides legal representation to defendants who cannot afford it, used one of his recent clients, who was just offered a 36-to-72-month sentence, as an example. The crime? Stealing $100-worth of quarters from a residential laundry room. Hechinger’s client may wind up doing more time than Manafort, a man who defrauded the Internal Revenue Service out of $6 million,” Reis Thebault and Michael Brice-Saddler report. “Hechinger listed a half dozen more examples. Among them were a Brooklyn teenager who got a 19-years-to-life sentence for burning a mattress in the hallway of his apartment building, resulting in the smoke-inhalation death of an officer who responded to the scene. He also cited the case of Cyrstal Mason, an ex-felon who was sent back to prison for five years after voting in the 2016 presidential election while on probation — an act she says she didn’t know was illegal.”

A defense lawyer tweeted that she had a client serving 3 1/2-7 years in prison for stealing laundry detergent from a drugstore (@DrRJKavanagh)

Two systems of justice. One for rich. The other for poor.

Categories Education Reform, Inequity, Injustice

Los Angeles: Jackie!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
7

 

 

Howard Blume wrote an incisive analysis of the race for the LAUSD seat in District 5, where Jackie Goldberg won 48% of the vote in a crowded field. He writes that UTLA put $660,000 into the race on behalf of Jackie, who is a progressive fighter for kids and public schools. She raised another $200,000 on her own. But she did not spend the most. The biggest spender (Heather Repenning) had a kitty of $1 million, contributed mainly by Local 99. Eli Broad put $100,000 into the Local 99 anti-Jackie effort but she received only 13% of the vote. Why did Local 99 spend $1 million to elect a pro-charter candidate? Odd, especially since charters are overwhelmingly non-union. Anyone have answers? Aside from Eli, the rest of the billionaire charter donors apparently decided to wait and see who ran against Jackie in the runoff, but their favorite (Repenning) ran 35 points behind Jackie. Maybe they will let this one go unless they can figure out how to paint a solid progressive as a devil with horns.

 

 

LOS ANGELES — Last year, the power of the local teachers union seemed to be on the wane while charter schools’ prospects were rising. Los Angeles Board of Education members backed by charter supporters were in control, and they’d pushed through a new superintendent whose background had nothing to do with education.

On Tuesday, voters showed how quickly things can change.

Jackie Goldberg, the union-backed candidate, easily outpaced nine others on the ballot in a special election that could shift the balance on the school board — thanks in large part to public support cultivated during a six-day strike by teachers in January…

Goldberg, who served on the board for two terms until 1991, proclaimed herself part of a larger movement to bring more resources to education — and also to rein in charter schools.

“This is the beginning and not the end of putting together all those people who came together around the teachers’ strike — not just here but in Oakland and the folks in Madera and the folks in Fresno that are all trying to make these things happen,” Goldberg said. “People moved to California when I was young for our schools. And since then we have starved them, and we cannot continue starving them. This movement is about that.”

It’s not yet clear whom Goldberg will face in the runoff, but it will either be Graciela Ortiz or Heather Repenning, who at last count were separated by 53 votes. Neither would be a clear-cut option for charter supporters. The candidate with the strongest pro-charter position, Allison Bajracharya, finished fifth.

Ortiz is a school counselor and a member of the Huntington Park City Council.

Repenning is a former public works commissioner and longtime senior aide to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Their order of finish will be settled by mail-in and provisional ballots. The vote count can continue as late as March 19.

Goldberg’s success was partly because of her own brand: She served on the school board, on the L.A. City Council and in the state Legislature; she’s well-known and well-regarded by many.

But her success also was built on teacher activism, including last year’s strikes in other states and this year’s walkouts in Los Angeles and Oakland. Union leaders in L.A. followed up their January strike by immediately launching a campaign that spent about $660,000 on Goldberg’s behalf. She also raised about $200,000 for her own campaign — and she noted Tuesday night that she’d benefited from 1,300 small contributions and 800 volunteers.

Her activism goes back to the University of California, Berkeley free speech movement of the mid-1960s — an era, she noted, in which students paid no tuition for their higher education. The state, she said, needs to find its way back to a deeper investment in its children…

Goldberg aligns with those who say privately operated charters — which compete with district-run schools for students and the funding that goes with them — are undermining public education…

Anti-charter themes were a regular refrain of striking teachers, and they seemed to strike a chord with people who may not previously have been familiar with the arguments.

A survey of L.A. Unified School District residents during and just after the strike found that about 3 in 4 said the focus should be on improving existing public schools rather than on alternatives such as charters, said Brianne Gilbert, associate director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Although the charter lobby remains powerful, it suffered a setback at the state level last year, when it ran campaigns on behalf of candidates who lost the races for governor and the state superintendent of public instruction. On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has signaled his openness to more regulation of charter schools — signed legislation that would compel charters to follow laws on public records and public meetings….

For this week’s primary, charter backers were never able to coalesce around an opponent to Goldberg. Bajracharya, an executive at a charter organization, had substantial support from charter allies but not the overwhelming sums provided by megadonors in recent elections.

Four candidates raised enough money to get their message out: Goldberg, Bajracharya, Ortiz and Repenning. And each also had donors who funded independent campaigns on their behalf. The teachers union’s spending on Goldberg was a relative bargain compared to what it spent in recent races — often in a losing cause.

But the biggest spender in the primary was Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, which represents most nonteaching district employees. It put nearly $1 million into a campaign to elect Repenning, who also had the endorsement of Garcetti.

Part of Local 99’s money paid for a misleading campaign against Goldberg, describing her as a career politician who is “always looking out for #1” and who favored prisons over schools, slashed education spending and presided over a failing school system.

Even if their campaign helped force a runoff, Repenning finished so far back that Local 99 now must ponder how much it wants to continue fighting Goldberg, with whom the union previously has gotten along.

Many observers assumed that the pro-charter funders — organized under the group California Charter Schools Association Advocates — were simply holding their fire till the runoff. Goldberg’s strong showing could affect that calculus.

A spokesman for CCSA Advocates declined to comment Wednesday.

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles

Jan Resseger: Why Is America Underinvesting in Education?

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
53

 

Jan Resseger writes one astonishingly smart post after another. We can all learn from her. Having dedicated her career to social justice and especially to education justice, she is steeped in the issues. But she has a way of putting together information from different sources that brings new light on old discussions.

This post about our national underinvestment in education is exemplary.

She begins like this:

For nearly two decades the preferred spin of policymakers at federal and state levels has been that financial investments (inputs) are far less important than evidence of academic achievement (outcomes as measured by standardized tests). And the outcomes were supposed to be achieved by pressuring teachers to work harder and smarter. Somehow teachers have been expected to deliver a miracle at the same time classes got bigger; nurses, counselors and librarians were cut; and teacher turnover increased as salaries lagged.

Statements of justice in public education have always been a little vague about the most direct path to get there.  One of my favorite definitions of public education’s purpose is from Benjamin Barber’s 1992 book, An Aristocracy of Everyone: “(T)he object of public schools is not to credential the educated but to educate the uncredentialed; that is, to change and transform pupils, not merely to exploit their strengths. The challenge in a democracy is to transform every child into an apt pupil, and give every pupil the chance to become an autonomous, thinking person and a deliberative, self-governing citizen: that is to say, to achieve excellence… Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer. Equality is achieved not by handicapping the swiftest, but by assuring the less advantaged a comparable opportunity. ‘Comparable’ here does not mean identical… Schooling is what allows math washouts to appreciate the contributions of math whizzes—and may one day help persuade them to allocate tax revenues for basic scientific research, which math illiterates would reject. Schooling allows those born poor to compete with those born rich; allows immigrants to feel as American as the self-proclaimed daughters and sons of the American Revolution; allows African-Americans, whose ancestors were brought here in bondage, to fight for the substance (rather than just the legal forms) of their freedom.”  (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 12-13)

There are many reasons to consider Barber’s principles carefully in Trump’s America. In the specific case of the provision of education, however, we ought to consider this question: Can these words—“Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer”— be achieved without our society’s investing in tangible inputs like class size and numbers of counselors and the presence of school music programs?  For a year now—in walkouts and strikes—schoolteachers have been telling us that policymakers are naive to believe inputs don’t matter.  In a new report, K-12 School Funding Up in Most 2018 Teacher-Protest States, But Still Well Below Decade Ago, the Center on Budget and Priorities (CBPP) confirms teachers’ outrage about the collapse of financial investment in their schools.

CBPP’s new report summarizes school funding in several of the states where striking teachers have called attention to their states’ long collapse of funding for K-12 public education: “Protests by teachers and others last year helped lead to substantial increases in school funding in Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, four of the 12 states that had cut school ‘formula’ funding—the primary state revenue source for schools—most deeply over the last decade. Despite last year’s improvements, however, formula funding remains well below 2008 levels in these states.”

CBPP explains further that to end teachers’ strikes, legislators too frequently went for a quick fix instead of a stable solution: “Three of the four teacher-protest states that increased formula funding last year used revenue sources that may prove unsustainable…. Arizona teachers ended their strike after Governor Doug Ducey signed a budget giving them a 20 percent salary increase over three years.  But the budget doesn’t include the new revenue required to finance the planned spending…. North Carolina’s legislature increased funding for schools without raising new revenue to do so, even though the state faces a revenue shortfall next year for covering ongoing needs, primarily due to unsustainable income tax cuts that began to take effect in 2014… Oklahoma funded pay increases for teachers and other public employees that included a hike in cigarette taxes, a boost in gasoline taxes, and an increase in the tax rate on oil extraction.  While these revenue sources were adequate to cover the pay hikes, they may not be in the future.”

Even the emergency increases after teachers’ strikes are not enough: “Most of the teacher-protest states had cut their formula funding so deeply over the last decade that even last year’s sizeable funding boosts weren’t enough to restore funding to pre-recession levels.  For example, in Oklahoma, per-student formula funding remains 15 percent below 2008 levels, including inflation adjustments.  And per-student formula funding in Arizona, North Carolina, and West Virginia, as well, is still well below pre-recession levels.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding

Missouri: Stop Privatization Now!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
6

 

The legislature in Missouri is considering bills for charters and vouchers, which will defund public schools.

if you live in Missouri, contact your legislator and express your support for yourcomm7nity’s Public s hoops.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Missouri, Privatization, Vouchers

Utah: Expose of Legislators Who Are Cashing in on the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
21

This report from television station KUTV in Salt Lake City points out a bizarre contradiction in Charter World.

Plenty of legislators are cashing in on charter schools

In Utah:

State Sen. Lincoln Fillmore (Dist. 10) is one of the foremost experts on charter schools in the state legislature. That makes sense given that he runs Charter Solutions, a company that from 2015 to 2018 has collected $5.7 million in fees from charter schools.

That is taxpayer money given to those charter schools. As many as 23 different charter schools have hired Fillmore’s company to help them administer their curriculum and take care of back office activities like payroll and human resources.

Fillmore says although he does field questions from lawmakers regarding charter schools, he never sponsors legislation that affects them.

He told 2News:

I’m fully transparent, my job, (as a lawmaker) the law requires all citizen legislators to fill out a conflict of interest disclosure. But I take the additional step of telling my constituents that I don’t run charter school bills

Critics say Fillmore doesn’t need to run legislation. He is the “go-to” voice in the legislature when it comes to charter schools.

In a Beyond the Books investigation, video of Fillmore was found during the second to last day of the legislature last year with him speaking on charter school legislation.

He wasn’t the sponsor of House Bill 231, or even the co-sponsor, but when lawmakers had questions about the bill, he was the one providing the answers.

Beyond the Books wanted to find out if lawmakers’ affiliations with charter schools affects their votes on legislation. A lengthy list of former and current lawmakers who currently sit, or used to sit, on the boards of individual charter schools was discovered.

They include:

  • Former House Speaker Greg Hughes, who is on the board of Summit Academy.
  • Senate President Stuart Adams, who is on the board of Assent Academies.
  • Rep. Kim Coleman is founder and director of Monticello Academy.
  • Former lawmakers Curt Oda, Chris Herrod, Matt Throckmorton, and Merlynn Newbold all sit or sat on the board of Utah Military Academy.
  • Former lawmaker Rob Muhlestein runs Harmony Education Services.
  • Former State Sen. Mark Madsen sat on the board of American Leadership Academy.
  • Howard Stephenson, who is considered the father of Utah Charter Schools because he sponsored the bill allowing for charter schools, says he does sit on a charter school board but resisted all offers until this year.
  • Sen. Jerry Stevenson, is on the board of Career Path High. His son, Jed Stevenson, is also part owner of Academica West with former state Sen. Sheldon Killpack, who resigned from the senate after he was arrested for DUI 8 years ago. Academica West has helped to build, design and manage 17 Utah charter schools. Stevenson says he never talks to his son, or his friend, Killpack, about business, even though the board of Career Path High meets at the Academica West offices. He said: “The only thing we do hold our board meetings (Career Path High) in their office building (Academica West), but they’re (Killpack, Jed Stevenson) not in attendance.”

Beyond the Books also compiled a list of lawmakers dating back to the early 2000’s who made millions off of charter schools while they were members of the legislature.

Former Reps. Glenn Way, Jim Ferrin and Mike Morley where in business together helping to build and run charter schools. The wife of Rep. Eric Hutchings, Stacey, runs Career Path High.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Utah
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